How They Broke Her
by LifeIsTooShortEatIceCream
Summary: Alice. The tiny girl who twirled like a ballerina and kissed her father's cheek. Fifteen years later, she rocks herself to sleep on the shrieking springs of her mental ward cot. They've broken the little girl into nothing but bits of shadow.


**This is pretty much a shameless promotion for a new story that I will be posting the first chapter of very soon. This was supposed to be the introduction, but I realized that I wasn't even half done and it was getting way too long, so I'll just give it to you guys as a one-shot. The summary for the new story is pretty much: A war, a tragedy, Alice and Renesmee are separated from the Cullens, who think that they've been killed. Alice knows that Renesmee isn't her own daughter, that she had her own husband once, and that she must keep Renesmee safe and return her to her family. She just can't remember who they are or how she is to find them... **

**So yeah. Lots of Alice/Jasper, and Renesmee growing up because I've always wanted to write about her and not make her a complete blank-eyed perfect Mary-Sue Barbie doll like I see a lot of stories do. And no, I'm not the kind of writer who would still write even if nobody read their crap. Sorry. If you want to see the new story, please review!**

**For realsies. Review. Thank you for reading. :) **

* * *

She is a saucy little one, seeming to always dangle over the edge of a mood of hers. She insists, pouts her little lip, can conjure up tears at the slightest bump of her head. Rarely was she a perfectly happy child. Rarely was she as radiant as she is now.

She lifts her bent, plumpish arms above her head and holds her chin high, imitating the ballerina painted on the side of her mother's jewelry box. Her dress is much too big for such a little body, small as she was even for barely having seen three years. It makes a cup of fabric, exposing the pale, baby-soft skin of her scrawny back. She goes on her toes, jutting out her tiny backside to keep her balance, and she spins, twirls, falls, twirls…

Her father, still dressed in a smart suit from his job, scoops her up in his big arms. He kisses her nose.

"Why do you do that?" she asks, not expecting an answer. Her mother had already turned to because-I-said-so-don't-disrespect-your-mama for all of her questions.

"Because your nose is much too small," he says, smiling, his mustache curling up at its manicured edges. "Perhaps if I kiss it, it will grow."

"Will the rest of me grow?"

"We'll wait and see, sweet," he says, and kisses her again. She smiles, and puts her pink hand on his cheek.

* * *

Her mother slams the door after Alice, her straw hat dripping rain. Not a moment in the house, she turns on her daughter, her voice cutting like a blade of ice down the girl's spine. "How did you know that? How did you know it would happen?"

"I-I just saw it," the tiny girl stutters, wishing she could swallow back the words she had said earlier of how there would be rain as soon as they put out their picnic. She had only not wanted her sister to cry, because Cynthia hated the rain. But Mama never listened. "I swear, Mama, I just saw it. Like I see you now."

Her mother's lower lip twitches, a droplet of water rolling on the bottom-side of the pale pink flesh. Alice wonders where her mother is, if she could ever find her in the watery, dead eyes that stare down at her.

Her mother opens her mouth as though her words are foul spit onto the little girl, but Cynthia cries out and hugs her sister's waist, burying her head in the familiar scent of the old stained dress her sister wore. She does not know of this other side of Mama. She is just afraid of the storm.

Mama grabs Cynthia's plump arm with her sharp, white fingers and jerks her into her own arms, where Alice knew her sister would never fit. Cynthia covers her face. Alice doesn't know if it is from fear of the storm, or fear of her mother. Or fear of her.

She runs into the storm, her wet dress grabbing to her legs. The rain is cold. Her tears are hot, so hot.

* * *

The carriage is black.

Her mother looks straight ahead, very regal, very proper. Her sharp chin that she gave to her daughter set high in the air as a defiant answer to all of her little girl's questions. _Why must I leave, Mama? What is wrong with me? Why Mama?_ Chin up. Eyes straight ahead.

Her hands dig into the socket of her daughter's shoulder as she kisses the girl without moving her gaze. Alice's father is next, and he makes to move for the same formal goodbye. But once his cheek reaches his daughter's lovely dark curls, it is as though a film around his breaks and encases her in his suit-laden embrace. She smells the scent of his shoe leather, one of his brass buttons pressing cold against her chest. His cheek is scratchy, as it always is in the evening. She squeezes her eyes shut.

"It will be nice there, Papa, won't it?" she whispers. She hasn't seen anything in a very long time. Not since Cynthia called her a witch. Not if she could help it.

"You'll make it ten times nicer, sweet," he whispers, one hand grasping to the back of her head.

"Will I come back soon?"

Her father doesn't answer. He instead squeezes her in his warmth so tightly for a moment that she fears she cannot breathe, and then lets her go. Her mother still stares, but her torso twitches, as if in disgust.

Alice kisses her father once more, than turns to the carriage. The coachman seems too wary, as if expecting more than a petite girl with her a silver clip her father had given her in her curls. The inside smells of old glue and horse manure. Her pale skin glows in the darkness of the dusty, worn velvet. She allows herself to look ahead, to steal just a single glimpse of her new home, of this place that her father promised would fix her-

_Metal bars. Cold hands, cold water. A shock of pain, another, her body is seized in a cramp, bones snapping weak skinmusclescurlingpain- _

She jerks forward, back into the present, chest heaving, eyes opening wide into the dank air. She twists her body violently towards the one, small, window. Her palms are pressed to the wooden carriage sides as if it were a cage, the carriage is jostling, moving, she screams for her Papa-

He does not hear her. He is crying.

* * *

The room is white.

The mattress is too large, bunching up at one end of the metal-wrought bars of the bed. The springs are rusty, and they shriek an awful noise as the tiny girl rolls to her side, rolls to her back, rolls to her side, over and over. There is another bed, holding another girl, with angled, bulging eyes, and a blank, fleshy-lipped mouth. She is naked. There are ties at her ankles, binding her to the bed, and they are caked with blood.

Alice talks to this bloody, naked girl whenever she can find the words. She knows that this tied girl is her friend, even if she doesn't talk back. Alice has named her Done. Done is a good word. Done is what the men in white coats say when the hurt ends and she can breathe again. It occurs to Alice to untie Done, but she finds that Done screams when she is touched. She tears strips from her dress to bind Done's wounds, but Done screams to that, too.

She goes back to the rust of her bed.

Alice is made of shadows. Shadows at her collarbones, shadows in the hollow of her caved chest, shadows where eyes once were. She gasps air from a parted, dry mouth, her eyelids fluttering but refusing to close. Her ankles are crossed, legs entangled and tucked into each other at the bends of her knees, her toes curled into her tiny feet as if even they are trying to hide. She rubs the hem of her frayed white shift, taking comfort from the soft fabric.

The shadowed bits, where have they gone? Perhaps she dropped them off, one by one, down the bare hallway down to Hurt Room. Perhaps they were never there. She doesn't know. She doesn't remember. She shivers, but does not feel the cold, for she has never felt warm.

There is only this. Only this white room. Only the hurt and the screaming of springs. And-

_A yoyo._

A yoyo? A red yoyo. Her mind supplies her with the words, the recognition, even though she doesn't remember ever having seen one. She stills in her bed, her eyes dimming to a shade of peace.

_Yes, it is red. Red like... like... She had never seen before. Big hands, smooth hands, bounce the red yoyo up and down with its cream string. The hands offer it to her, and she cups it in her small, shaking palms, and thinks she has never seen anything more beautiful in her life-_

The door opens with a soft sigh of oiled brass joints. The shadowed girl freezes, her chest aching as her heart knocks the inside of her ribs like a bell. Perhaps, she thinks, her heart will break her apart from the inside. Crack every bone until all that's left are her shattered pieces inside a bag of skin. Could they still hurt her?

The door is bad. The door means hurt.

But-

A hand appears, smooth and big and white.

But maybe not this time.

The man takes of his white coat as soon as he enters, shutting the door forcefully behind him. He is different from the doctors, the shadowed girl knows. His eyes are red, and he moves much too fast when he is with her. Perhaps all good people have red eyes and fast limbs. All Alice knows is that he is _safe_.

The man has a hard eyes but a kind, soft mouth that turns up at one corner like a hairpin when the shadow girl sits up to meet him. He kneels by her bedside so that she mustn't look up to him.

"Can you guess what I've brought you today?"

The shadowed girl smiles, her entire head lifting with her cheeks, surprising herself at the foreign gesture that takes over her face. "Yes," she says, small nose proudly in the air. "A yoyo. A red yoyo. Red like I've never seen before." She decides not to waste time. If she saw it, than it must come true. "Might I hold it? I already know it is beautiful."

The man gets a very sad look in his eye then, and Alice is confused. Was she wrong? She was never wrong. Did she dissapoint him? Would her bring her to the Hurt Room, like the other doctors did when she was naughty?

No. Of course not. He is not like the others. He pulls out the yoyo from a pocket in his pants. It is so red against his hands, like a splash of Done's blood soaking into the lines of his palms. "Of course you can," he says, handing it gently to her thin, waiting hands. "Of course you can, my sweet."

My sweet...

Alice's hands clench over the yoyo. They look skeletal.

_...make it ten times nicer, sweet..._

She turns to the man, forgetting the yoyo, forgetting the white walls around her. "Joseph?" She asks, the name fitting soundly into her mouth like a puzzle piece, even though she could not remember placing it there before.

Joseph knows what is coming. "Yes?"

"Why is Done tied to the bed? Why am I here? Where am I?"

Joseph sighs, and takes back the forgotten yoyo from her hands. "Sit with me, darling," he says, and Alice clambers from the bed, her limbs shaky against the cold ground. Joseph folds her into his side, her skinny limbs tucked into him like a baby animal. He wishes he could giver her a blanket. He wishes he could give her her name, as well, but that was lost to the records that he couldn't reach.

He starts the story. Of her gift, of her father, and in the end, of her mother. And of the carriage. He knows Alice's story by heart. He tells it to her every day.


End file.
